“That’s fine.”
She nodded and went into the alcove.
He remained on the couch, trying to calm his racing thoughts. Then, remembering that simple actions often had calming effects, he decided to get up and make a fire.
As he reached the fireplace, he was startled by a thud at the balcony door.
His first thought was that a bird had flown into it. His second thought was that birds don’t fly at night in snowstorms.
He went to the door and peered out through the glass panel. A coating of ice made it difficult to see anything. Cautiously, he opened the door.
He saw something lying on the snow that had blown onto the balcony.
He stepped out for a closer look.
It appeared to be an irregularly shaped package, about a foot long and three inches in diameter, clumsily wrapped with newspaper and duct tape.
He took another step to the balcony railing, looking as far as he could see in both directions along the lake road.
He saw no one—heard nothing but the wind.
He picked up the package, judging that it weighed less than a pound.
He took it inside to the coffee table. He pushed the two foil-covered plates out of the way and removed the duct tape that held the package together. Most of the newspaper wrapping came off with the tape.
Two devices lay exposed on the table in front of him.
One he recognized instantly as a fiber-optic surveillance camera.
The other device wasn’t familiar at all. It was a matte-black object about the size of a roll of dimes. Along the side was something that appeared to be a serial number. On one end there were eight very small holes, and in each hole a shiny bit of curved glass.
Some sort of lenses? He’d never seen lenses that small. But what else could they be? There was one fact, however, about which Gurney became increasingly certain as he studied the dimensions of both devices. These were almost certainly the objects that had been installed in, and then removed from, the joist space he’d inspected in the attic—the space above the bathroom light fixture.
He suddenly noticed what he’d missed in his hurry to examine the devices.
Two words were roughly scribbled in block letters on the inside of one of the newspaper sheets that had been used as wrapping paper.
BE WARNT
CHAPTER 45
The language of the message obviously pointed to Barlow Tarr.
But if it was Tarr, why had he put himself at risk? And what exactly was the evil Gurney was being “warnt” about—yet again?
And if it wasn’t Tarr, why might someone want him to think it was?
Those questions kept him awake till the wee hours of the morning. Then, after sleeping fitfully for a couple of hours, he was awake again before dawn. Finding himself slipping back into the same loop of evidence-starved speculation, he decided to get up, take a shower, and get dressed.
He went to the balcony door to evaluate the weather conditions. Snow crystals passing through the reach of the lodge floodlights were sparkling in the dry air. The thermometer mounted on the balcony railing, half-encrusted with ice, looked like it was registering eight below zero. Gurney took a step out to make sure he was seeing it right.
As he turned to go back inside, something caught his eye. Something on the road that led down from the ridge to the lodge.
A glint of light.
As he strained his eyes into the darkness he saw a second glint, a few feet from the first. The two were moving in tandem, like headlights, only smaller and weaker.
Parking lights, he realized.
He waited, watched, listened.
The lights came closer. Eventually they came close enough that he could see that they were the parking lights of a pickup truck.
The truck turned onto the lake road, moved slowly past the outer reach of the lodge floodlights, and on toward . . . toward what?
The boathouse?
One of the chalets?
The Gall mansion?
As the truck faded into the storm, Gurney noted that its disappearance was aided by the absence of any visible taillights.
He went inside and locked the door.
He spent the next half hour on his laptop, scanning through the products offered by suppliers of surveillance and anti-surveillance equipment, hoping to find something that resembled the strange little tubular device that had him baffled.
What he found was a thriving industry. Hundreds of companies, many with the word “Spy” in their names, were marketing sophisticated hardware at affordable prices.
The items fell into two main categories. Devices that purportedly enabled the user to observe and record anything that anyone did or said, just about anywhere. And devices designed to defeat all the capabilities of the first category. The underlying sales pitch seemed to be, “Spy on everyone. Be spied on by no one.”
The perfect industry for a paranoid world.
He failed to find anything that looked like the little black gadget with the eight minuscule lenses—if that’s what they were.
He examined it again. There seemed to be no way of opening it. He could detect no battery warmth in it. The number etched on the side offered no clue. It did, however, prompt him to try a long shot. He entered the serial number in his Internet search engine.
It produced one result, a website with the obscure address, “www.a1z2b3y4c5x.net.”
He went to the site and found nothing there but an otherwise blank page with four data-entry boxes asking for a current ID, previous ID, current password, and previous password.
In a way, it was a dead end. But the wall of security it presented was noteworthy. At the very least, it was a reinforcement of Robin Wigg’s warning. And Gilbert Fenton’s warning. Not to mention the scribbled warning that arrived in the package.
Thinking of Wigg prompted him to get his phone, take photos of the device from several angles, and email them to her along with the serial number and website URL.
He received a reply less than two minutes later: “Pics inadequate. Site locked. Send item.” He was pleased by her interest but saw no timely way to comply with her request.
“How long have you been up?” Madeleine’s voice startled him.
He turned and saw her standing by the bathroom door in her tee shirt and pajama bottoms.
“Maybe an hour or so?”
“We’re due at the Hammonds at eight.”
She went into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. She stayed well away from the tub and went straight to the shower stall in the far corner.
Her willingness to use the room at all struck him as a positive sign.
While she was showering, he began thinking about the breakfast they’d be having with Richard and Jane, and how, despite his misgivings about the visit, he might make use of it. There were questions he could ask, reactions he could assess. He could bring up the theory of the four deaths being a form of revenge for a long-ago tragedy. A tragedy involving the disappearance of a gay teenager. It would be interesting to see what Richard had to say about that.
THE WIND GUSTING OVER THE SNOW-COVERED ROAD HAD ONLY partly obscured the tire tracks of the pickup truck that had traveled the same way earlier. Gurney’s curiosity was intensified when he saw that the tracks turned off the road toward Richard’s chalet and curved around the back of it. The vehicle that made those tracks must still be there. He was tempted to investigate on the spot but changed his mind when he saw how cold Madeleine looked.
Jane, as usual, welcomed them at the front door with an anxious smile. After they hung up their jackets, she led them into the big cathedral-ceilinged living area. “I had the chef at the lodge prepare a few different breakfast items for us—scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, oatmeal, mixed fruits. He delivered it all himself. The kitchen helper and housemaid stayed home in Bearston today, with the terrible weather, and he’s leaving for home himself before it gets any worse. I asked him to put everything downstairs in the rec room, at your friend’s suggestion.”